Sleepy Fox Hollow brimming and broken and somehow

straight away she was glowing with shame: how roundly she dreaded her arrival to grief, not the least of all right in front of someone whose approval she coveted the most.

every line in her body screamed 'i shouldn't have opened my mouth!' -- an unforthcoming shift of her eyes, cutting away, seeking distraction; a cursory look noting that the hind and her fawns had retired to the shade.

"truthfully...?" her soft voice languished. how best to paint in words the dreich landscape of her anxieties? 

and was it the gut-lurch of foreboding she meant to describe, or something entirely different? 

the silence felt like purgatory, and to that end, phaedra groomed her expression till something more resolved took shape. "i'm afraid that things will be the same as before. and before sucked. i don't want to get my hopes up about things being better," she admitted, her face feeling hot. she stole a glance at her father to gauge his reaction to her preamble, blinking away the sheen of her gaze. 

voice lowered to a murmur for the next. she scuffed the dirt. "grownups shouldn't make decisions that force their kid to choose between her parents..."